Embodiments of the present application relate generally to systems and methods for radiological imaging. Particularly, certain embodiments relate to techniques for grouping radiological image data based on functional portions of a patient.
Radiological clinicians (e.g., radiologists) routinely review large quantities of image data. It may be possible so simplify the reading of a radiological study by grouping images based on the body part. A body part may, for example, refer to the physical location or area of a patient's anatomy. A body part may consist of multiple organs or tissue types. Examples of body parts include chest, abdomen, pelvis, head, neck, and/or the like.
FIG. 1 illustrates how images may be grouped by body part. A radiological image 100 includes various organs, tissues, and body parts. Two body parts are shown—chest 102, and abdomen 104. Body parts may contain different types of functional units, which might not be considered while grouping images.
In a radiology reading the images of a study may be grouped based on the body part and procedure, for example. A scan of a body part's images may be grouped together for a radiology reading as a single group or multiple image groups depending on grouping criteria. Furthermore, image enhancement techniques (e.g., window level and look tables) may be configured to correspond to the imaged body part and/or the procedure.
However, grouping by body part may not assist the clinician to efficiently navigate a study to focus on a specific functional unit of a patient. For example, as shown in FIG. 1, the chest 102 includes several organs, including the heart and lungs. Similarly, the abdomen 104 includes several organs, including the spine, and lungs, heart, and/or the like.
Instead of focusing on a body part, a clinician may wish to focus on a functional portion of a patient. A functional portion of a patient may be a portion of a functional unit, or may be a functional unit, for example. A functional unit is a portion of a patient that has particular clinical significance. A functional unit may include an organ, a tissue, a bone, a collection of organs, a collection of tissues, a collection of bones, and the like. A chest, abdomen CT study contains functional units such as heart, lungs, stomach, colon, and/or the like, for example. A slice from the study may contain pixels of different functional units. For example lung and heart may overlap in few of the image slices. While there are numerous examples of functional units, a few include a patient's heart, lung, or spine. Thus, a radiologist wishing to focus on a specific organ may not be able to efficiently navigate a study that is grouped by body parts.
In addition to grouping by functional portion, it may be useful to provide image enhancement that corresponds to the functional unit and/or procedure to assist a clinician to efficiently navigate and read a study.
Thus, there is a need for methods and systems that group study images according to functional portion(s) of a patient. There is a need for methods and systems that improve the efficiency of study navigation for clinicians focusing on functional portion(s). Additionally, there is a need for methods and systems that provide image enhancement corresponding to a functional unit of a patient.